The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down • Hacker News Board

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#31

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Apr 27, 2024, 4:27 PM UTC

xyzzy123 wrote: post #21

Bjorkbat wrote: post #14

Something I keep thinking about is how we’re seeing the end of what I call the “tech zeitgeist”. Started upon realizing that we‘ve likely seen the end of the social network era. No new social networking startups have popped-off in a while, and the recent ones are arguably more about connecting you to entertainers than friends. Besides that, a lot of the tech ideas from 2012-2020 have kind of fizzled out. 3D printing…

I notice you didn't mention drones...

They are turning into a military success in Eastern Europe.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#32

Post by ChilledTonic » Sat, Apr 27, 2024, 4:28 PM UTC

I’ve been a recent convert to the iPhone. It gives me a unique perspective since I’ve spent almost my entire life in the Android ecosystem.

I first bought an iPhone 5c on a whim, which is well out of support by apple, 5 versions behind the modern iOS. If you turn it on, all the default Apple apps work, in 2024.

You can stream Apple Music and download podcasts with no App Store whatsoever. It’s a powerful little device, more then ten years later.

Compare this to the Android system, where google has wholesale deprecated their podcasts app. You’ll have to find a 3rd party one if you want to access that functionality.

The point I’m trying to make is that for Joe Consumer, everything on an iPhone just works. Modification isn’t even something they consider doing.

In the end, Epic and Spotify get a fat 30% boost in revenue and nobody notices anything different.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#33

Post by beeboobaa3 » Sat, Apr 27, 2024, 4:29 PM UTC

pfannkuchen wrote: post #18

One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned in discussions of communications tech monopoly (or “monopoly” in many cases) is the risk of future political censorship by a hypothetical future evil Apple. Centralized market power here isn’t just about unfair profits or bad products, it’s also about control of information (and therefore control of minds).

Especially considering how these big tech companies seem obsessed with gobbling up communication, and seem to want all of their users communication to go through them.

Sure, Apple makes grandiose statements about its security and privacy. But they are protecting you from others. Apple has the keys to the kingdom and if they want they can just silently push a targeted software update to your device.

They can make your phone send messages you never typed. They can make your phone show you things that never happened. They could trivially influence an election, and it doesn't even take the entire org being in on it.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#34

Post by aurareturn » Sat, Apr 27, 2024, 4:31 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #17

aurareturn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is, all businesses do what Craig suggested. AirBnB isn't opening up their platform to Expedia. Meta isn't allowing your Instagram data to be accessed by another platform. Your own company isn't voluntarily making it easier for its customers to leave.

Companies shouldn't be expected to individually make suboptimal decisions in order to preserve the health of the market. They should be regulated by a functioning government.

Let's just say that the government decided in the year 2005 that no private company can ship something that will replace SMS as the defacto messaging system because it wants interoperability.

We would have never had iMessage, Whatsapp, Messenger, etc. Other countries would have far surpassed us in messaging communication tech.

Regulations are a double edged sword.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#35

Post by smokel » Sat, Apr 27, 2024, 4:31 PM UTC

Bjorkbat wrote: post #14

Something I keep thinking about is how we’re seeing the end of what I call the “tech zeitgeist”. Started upon realizing that we‘ve likely seen the end of the social network era. No new social networking startups have popped-off in a while, and the recent ones are arguably more about connecting you to entertainers than friends. Besides that, a lot of the tech ideas from 2012-2020 have kind of fizzled out. 3D printing…

I find this a strange perspective. There are many tech ideas which have barely even started. Quantum computing, space travel, DNA modification, climate control, to name a few. These will all affect a lot of humans in the future, unless we mess something up.

Or perhaps I am misunderstanding your comment, and you focus more on the media and communication part of tech?

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#36

Post by pmarreck » Sat, Apr 27, 2024, 4:32 PM UTC

s1k3s wrote: post #5

> Apple executive Eddy Cue pushed for an Android iMessage app in 2016, but Craig Federighi responded in an internal email that “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.” This conversation happened 8 years ago and it was about a product released 12 years ago. If anything, this shows how slow regulators are before they take any action and how they…

> “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.”

This statement says a few extra things that Craig Federighi probably didn't realize he was saying.

1) It suggests that the iPhone wouldn't be able to hold its own in a market where interoperability with Android was easier. That demonstrates a lack of faith in it.

2) I've noticed that any time a corporation starts to clutch its fingers around its flagship product and make it less open, it starts to die. Oh sure, there's an upfront benefit perhaps in sales, but you're literally selling the future of your thing to profit from it today, by doing this.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#37

Post by lupusreal » Sat, Apr 27, 2024, 4:34 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #16

The thing people love forgetting is a huge part of the iPhone success is based on the North American cellular comms industry being a trustless disaster area. The deal Apple did with AT&T opened the floodgates. Android was initially designed so that operators could customise it. The idea was apps were developed (and sold) only by operators, and everything else would be via the browser. If you had used a Nokia device i…

That's a nice history lesson but sideloading alternate appstores (namely F-Droid) on Android works great and Apple shouldn't be allowed to forbid the same on iOS. And I don't give a damn about the "grandma conned into sideloading scam apps" scenario. Grandma is getting scammed over regular phonecalls already anyway.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#38

Post by sircastor » Sat, Apr 27, 2024, 4:35 PM UTC

qiine wrote: post #28

Bjorkbat wrote: post #14

Something I keep thinking about is how we’re seeing the end of what I call the “tech zeitgeist”. Started upon realizing that we‘ve likely seen the end of the social network era. No new social networking startups have popped-off in a while, and the recent ones are arguably more about connecting you to entertainers than friends. Besides that, a lot of the tech ideas from 2012-2020 have kind of fizzled out. 3D printing…

It sure feels like 3D printing especially "desktop" has trouble improving recently, and is nowhere near democratized like classic printer, and its not entirely a hardware problem.

Part of the trouble with 3D printing is that its utility is limited if you don’t know how to design, and not everyone wants to learn.

If you have no CAD/modeling experience, making something custom is limited to the simple variation available in the software, or you just buy off the shelf models. 3D printing skeptics said that 3D printers were just for making worthless junk.

There’s an opportunity coming with an LLM-style text-to-model generator. I saw one recently and it is pretty exciting.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#39

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 27, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

Bjorkbat wrote: post #14

Something I keep thinking about is how we’re seeing the end of what I call the “tech zeitgeist”. Started upon realizing that we‘ve likely seen the end of the social network era. No new social networking startups have popped-off in a while, and the recent ones are arguably more about connecting you to entertainers than friends. Besides that, a lot of the tech ideas from 2012-2020 have kind of fizzled out. 3D printing…

[deleted]

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#40

Post by bugbuddy » Sat, Apr 27, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

EgoIncarnate wrote: post #22

bugbuddy wrote: post #8

[flagged]

Can you explain? My intution and rough calculations say you are wrong. ChatGPT agrees "To determine the long-term annual sales of phones for a company with a constant customer base of 1 billion, where each customer upgrades at different intervals, you first need to know the average replacement interval, T years. The annual sales can then be calculated as 1,000,000,000 divided by T. For example, if customers upgrade e…

I was wrong. It was a joke. Please don’t tell the phone manufacturers this. I want my phone to last at least a few years.